MBTF: His claim that we never met isn’t true
IN a news conference last Thursday (June 22) afternoon, Mayor Belen Fernandez belied Erfe-Mejia’s statement that she and members of the minority did not meet at anytime in the past.
She said that as far as she can recall, she met members of the majority five times in the past but she nevertheless agreed to meet members of the group again at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, June 23, with members of the minority and some department heads in attendance.
“I hope they can come. We will wait for them,” Fernandez said.
Asked whether she will yield to the majority’s requests, Fernandez said she will not agree if the requests are illegal, contrary to law and the norms of decency.
At the same time, Fernandez said her office already resubmitted the 2023 annual budget and submitted the supplemental annual investment plan 1 to the SP on June 23, including all the pertinent documents that needed to support the two measures.
What were submitted, she said, were actually the same documents that were specified by the DBM Manual on Budgeting Procedures and the guidelines set by Department of the Interior and Local Government, together with the proposed annual budget and the proposed AIP way back in October last year.
When asked if the documents included the list of Job Order Employees and consultants, whose non-submission before prompted the majority to slash the budget for the salaries of all JOEs and consultants numbering more than 700, Fernandez said “unfortunately such list is not specified in the DBM manual and DILG guidelines.”
In her opening statement during the LDC meeting at Lenox Hotel on June 21, she said she complied fully with all the things that need to be done to ensure the passage of the annual budget and the annual investment plan but these were largely ignored that resulted in the DBM’s finding that the P864.93 million annual budget was “inoperative in its entirety”
She expressed hope that the majority will pass the annual budget this time because it is the money of the people of Dagupan, not of the majority councilors, that will fund the budget. (Leonardo Micua)
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